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Archive for tag "ECO12 Berlin"

Capital-intensive smart green startups in Europe aiming at building their own hardware factories have a hard time fundraising. Financially motivated VCs require capital efficiency and prefer hardware startups that outsource manufacturing and the necessary CAPEX. Financing new PV factories in Europe is even more difficult due to China’s hegemony. It turns out it can only be done if you develop the next generation of PV technology, continuously improve efficiency and work diligently on building a co-investor syndicate of family offices, corporates and governments. Keep in mind that it was the Chinese government that backed a myriad of Chinese manufacturers to hijack the global PV industry. After a very long fundraising journey, 10-year old Organic Photovoltaics (OPV) pioneer Heliatek finally found the capital to build its second 3G solar factory in Dresden, Germany’s epicentre of photonics and organic semiconductors.

Ecosummit TV: Waste heat is a very big but rarely used energy resource. Being back at Ecosummit, Holger Ulland pitches O-Flexx at ECO14 Berlin. The smart green startup develops and manufactures in their Duisburg-based 1 MW factory thermoelectric generators that convert heat to electricity. The thermoelectric generators can be used in the steel, automotive and locomotive industries as well as for heating systems and autonomous sensors. The first customers are SMS Siemag (steel plants) and Bombardier (diesel locomotives). O-Flexx is backed by Emerald Technology Ventures and NRW Bank whom they met at ECO12 Berlin. O-Flexx has got a very strong IP portfolio, first revenues and is currently fundraising to accelerate its growth.

Ecosummit TV: Every company in every industry has to go green and make and sell sustainable products. At the same time, smart green investors take sustainability reports very seriously when making investment decisions. In September 2014, the EU Commission issued their long-awaited directive for mandatory sustainability reports for companies with more than 500 employees that has to be translated into national law within 2 years. Now Enterprise Sustainability Management (ESM) software providers like WeSustain are en vogue. CEO Manfred Heil expects the market to triple within the next 4 years. Customer references like Daimler, Commerzbank and Allianz as well as reseller Telekom will help the well positioned German startup and its team of 20 employees to grow even faster than the market.

On 14 February 2014, Enernoc buys Entelios, Germany’s demand response pioneer. The Munich-based startup was founded in July 2010 by serial entrepreneurs Oliver Stahl, Tom Schulz and Stephan Lindner. With a holding period of 3 years since the first VC investment this is definitely a fast cleantech exit. But this exit may have happened too fast given that demand response is the killer app of the smart grid, a massive global market opportunity and a capital efficient option to accelerate the Energiewende (energy transition). In the end, smart demand wins over stupid supply even though it is hard to convince all market participants. And before we forget: congratulations to the Entelios team.

Ecosummit TV: Holger Ulland pitches O-Flexx at ECO12 Berlin. The German cleantech startup develops and manufactures thermoelectric generators that convert heat to electricity. After difficult times, O-Flexx recently raised €2.4M and achieved a quantum leap in their lab improving the output of their energy conversion process by a factor of 100. This is what their investor Markus Moor, Partner at Emerald, told me at the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium last week in London. Enough good reasons to watch this promising smart green startup on Ecosummit TV. Update: O-Flexx and NRW Bank met at ECO12 Berlin for the first time and NRW Bank invested in early 2013.

Ecosummit TV: Laing come from Berlin and are one of Germany’s hottest electronic pop acts. The three beautiful ladies led by Nicola Rost sing, swing and dance to a very cool choreography and are supported by a drummer, dancer and beatbox. At Ecosummit Berlin 2012, Laing performed a very groovy concert which we recorded for Ecosummit TV. Enjoy the show! We wish you happy Xmas and a smart green 2013!

Ecosummit TV: CTO Robert Schwemmer pitches the Austrian startup Naporo at ECO12 Berlin. Naporo’s product is the plant cattail which can be used as sustainable building material. Naporo’s technology processes the cattail biomass into non-woven fabrics that are sold as thermal building insulation and as a pre-product for the furniture and automotive industry. Naporo was founded in 2009, incubated at Tech2b and is backed by 3M. Now Naporo wants to raise €2.5M to set up inhouse production to reduce production costs by 40%. According to Robert, cattail is the new hemp and represents a global business opportunity.

Ecosummit TV: Laurent Giai-Miniet pitches the late stage cleantech startup EnOcean at ECO12 Berlin. EnOcean provides wireless energy harvesting technology for smart green buildings and has become the de facto standard for batteryless building and home automation. Sensors and switches powered by EnOcean modules are used to control the lighting, heating and cooling of rooms depending on room occupancy and other variables such as open or closed windows. EnOcean’s investors include Wellington, Emerald, Chrysalix SET and Siemens. If you are planning a new or retrofit smart green building, EnOcean is the right choice.

Ecosummit TV: Tristan Foerster, Managing Director of ClimatePartner, talks about climate change management and explains what companies can do to protect the climate. First, companies have to measure, avoid and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then they can offset their residual carbon footprint which cannot be reduced any further by buying CO2 certificates in the market. In fact, we are doing it and cooperate with ClimatePartner as Ecosummit’s carbon offset partner. Together we made both ECO12 Berlin and ECO12 Düsseldorf climate neutral. Do you know other cleantech conferences that invest in being climate neutral?

Ecosummit TV: Knut Hechtfischer pitches Ubitricity. The Berlin-based startup wants to disrupt the charging infrastructure game for electric vehicles (EV) by rolling out low-cost electric sockets. The concept is called mobile metering and is based on putting the intelligence into the charging cable rather than the charging station. Ubitricity is an ambitious Lean Cleantech Startup that develops and produces a lean and cost-efficient product together with a value web of suppliers. We look forward to enjoying Knut again on stage at ECO12 Düsseldorf.

Ecosummit TV: Klaus Dibbern pitches Flinc, the famous realtime ride sharing startup. Flinc is integrated with several navigation systems and supports iPhone and Android. The German cleantech startup has got over 100.000 users and goes international now. They have a B2B and B2C business model based on transaction fees, subscriptions and affiliate marketing. We believe Flinc is one of the hottest sustainable social mobility startups in Europe.

Ecosummit TV: Urban Keussen, SVP Technology & Innovation, presents the smart green innovation strategy of EON at ECO12 Berlin. Urban gives a very informative lecture on how a big utility like EON analyses megatrends and new key technologies that are decisive for the Energiewende (energy transformation). Although EON is still very active in large-scale energy generation with fossil fuels, it invested over €7B in renewables during the last couple of years, mostly in wind. Urban is the perfect point of contact for high-quality cleantech startups that are interested in doing business with EON. We look forward to his upcoming talk at ECO12 Düsseldorf.

5 smart green startups that are connected to Ecosummit in various ways successfully raised new venture capital during the last months: Power to Gas pioneer SolarFuel (€7.5M, Germany), electric scooter maker Govecs (€10M, Germany), bike messenger platform Tiramizoo (undisclosed, Germany), sustainable cooling provider Sortech (undisclosed, Germany) and algae harvester Evodos (undisclosed, Netherlands). Let’s take a closer look at the products and business models of the startups and their new investors.

Ecosummit TV: Jakob Assmann pitches Polarstern at ECO12 Berlin. Polarstern is a German startup that positions as a retailer of green electricity and green gas. They have big plans and believe they can be more innovative than the big utilities because they are fast, smart and green. Polarstern is based in Munich, raised €350K and has 12 employees. Polarstern claims to be the first utility in Germany that can offer a green gas product at a competitive price as a result of having developed their own green gas trading system.

Ecosummit TV: Not only their name is cool but also their business model. Felix Krause pitches Milk the Sun at ECO12 Berlin. The Berlin-based smart green startup develops and operates an online marketplace for existing and planned PV systems connecting buyers and sellers. Milk the Sun’s goal is to establish solar investments as a liquid asset class that can be easily traded. There are several service providers attached to the marketplace that can help make a PV installation more effective and cost-efficient, thus increasing ROI. Milk the Sun is live in Germany, UK and Italy and looks for funding to accelerate their company growth.

Ecosummit TV: CEO Pascal Mauberger pitches the French hydrogen storage startup at ECO12 Berlin. Founded in 2008, MyPhy Energy raised €15.2M in 2 rounds from Emertec, Sofinnova Partners and Gimv. They are now 35 people and want to grow to over 100 in a few years. McPhy’s technology is able to store large amounts of hydrogen at low pressure and enables onsite production and storage of hydrogen. If you take renewable energy as a source, you can create green hydrogen using an electrolyser from one of McPhy’s partners. McPhy Energy is on a promising growth path and if you need large-scale hydrogen storage, please get in touch with Pascal.

Ecosummit TV: Europeans don’t think big enough. Michael Linse (KPCB), Pascal Mauberger (McPhy Energy), Oliver Stahl (Entelios) and Bart Markus (Wellington) discuss the differences between the cleantech startup and VC business in USA and Europe. There are many things we can learn from each other. On average, US cleantech startups get 4 times more capital than European ones. This has to do with the different environment in terms of market size, capital availability and competition.